


The Morning After

by Lurky McLurklurk (ionlylurkhere)



Category: Black Books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-18
Updated: 2008-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionlylurkhere/pseuds/Lurky%20McLurklurk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fran wakes up in a hungover haze.  Nothing out of the ordinary so far .</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to livii for enormously helpful beta-ing.
> 
> Written for Basingstoke

 

 

Fran groaned as she woke up. She felt as though tiny little men with jackhammers were boring their way into her skull, probably in an attempt to exhume whatever it was that had died inside her mouth.

So, hangover. Not an intrinsically unfamiliar experience, really.

But as her awareness of her surroundings moved beyond simple concepts like "too bright" and "too loud", some rather more disturbing facts began to present themselves.

She was not, it turned out, in her own bedroom. This bedroom was quite a bit smaller and much, much dirtier than the one in her flat.

And there was some sort of warmth in the bed next to her that seemed like it could just possibly be another person.

Slowly, very slowly, with a mounting feeling of dread and preemptive regret, she turned to look. And found herself gazing into the equally alarmed eyes of ...

"Gwaaaarrhh!" Bernard said.

Fran yelped.

"No," Bernard said. "No no no no no no no no no ..."

As Bernard repeated his monosyllabic mantra, memories began to disconnect themselves from the drunken fog surrounding the previous night and drift up as little wisps of smoke into Fran's consciousness. Memories of this bed, and downstairs, in the shop, and hands and lips and ... and other things. And apart from (or perhaps despite) the disturbing Bernard-containing element of the memories, they were not intrinsically bad. In fact, one particular remembered sensation was apparently good enough for her body to spontaneously stage a diminished sort of action replay. Hopefully Bernard would interpret it as an appalled shudder.

Of course, she had every right to be appalled. Even if there was a chance it had been quite good. Bernard was a ... well, he was Bernard. And he had no right whatsoever to be acting as horrified as he was, still mumbling "no" to himself over and over.

"Hey!" Fran said. "I was good!"

Bernard avoided answering directly, but Fran knew him well enough to recognise the tiniest hint of a smile curving the corner of his lips for a microsecond. "I suppose it is only natural," he said. "The sort of thing that happens when two people are close and one of them's devillishly attractive and witty and charming and the other's ... completely desperate."

Fran felt a sort of lifting feeling in her chest, as though her heart had grown wings. "You think I'm devillishly attractive?" she asked. "Really?"

"No, you're the desperate one. Clearly, you're the desperate one. You're the sort of person who people wearing colourful flowers on the off-chance that someone will mistake them for someone they're supposed to be meeting from a dating agency look at and think 'Well, at least I'm not as desperate as her'."

"You know what your problem is?" Fran said. "You project your internalised self-loathing onto the entire world and it makes you a mean, bitter, mean ... man!" She shook her fist a little for emphasis.

"You got that from a book," Bernard shot back sulkily.

"Well, if I did it wasn't one from _your_ shop!"

"If, by some improbable chain of events that even a Hollywood action movie director would consider too unbelievable to be used as a plotline, there happened to be a book in my shop containing anything even slightly resembling that sort of touchy-feely nonsensical psychobabble," Bernard said, leaning close towards her, "it would only be found in the loo. Being used as loo roll," he clarified, unnecessarily.

"Well, if your shop had a toilet for people to use ..." for a single vertiginous moment Fran realised that she had no idea at all where she was going with this, but then inspiration struck "... then it would be one thousand times more customer-friendly than it is."

"Don't you _dare_ say customer-friendly like it's a good thing!"

Fran cast around desperately for a better witty rejoinder than blowing a big raspberry at the infuriating idiot, but ended up being saved by the door creaking open. Both she and Bernard turned to see Manny coming in, carrying a wooden tray, wearing a pair of short white socks and absolutely nothing else.

Fran turned to stare solidly at the wall, drawing the blankets closer around herself in the process. She blinked repeatedly, trying to clear the image she feared would be burnt into her mind forevermore. Bernard, meanwhile, let out a manly shriek.

Manny put the tray down and began handing out food. "Marmalade on toast for you," he said in a sing-song voice as he thrust a plate under Fran's nose. She turned fractionally to snatch it, and found herself staring in horrified fascination as Manny continued, oblivious to their reactions. "Bacon roll for _you_ ," he said, pushing another plate onto an unwilling Bernard. "And kippers for me." He sat down on the bed between them and rested the plate on his bare thighs, then said "Yow!" when he realised it was hot and grabbed the tray to protect himself. 

"What?" Manny said, when he finally realised that Fran and Bernard did not seem pleased to see him.

"Manny, for the love of all that is good and decent in the world, put on some clothes," Bernard said. Manny simply looked perplexed, so he barked "Now!"

"I thought, after last night ..."

"You thought what, after last night?" Bernard said. "Just because Fran and I had some sort of drunken indiscretion ..."

"No, no, no," Fran said. "I remember now. _You_ were the one who started stroking his hair." One of the least outrageous of the images currently dancing across her mind's eye was of Manny, slumped in a drunken stupor in an armchair downstairs, and Bernard running a hand through his locks talking about how soft they were.

"I don't ..." Bernard's mouth hung open as his own memory seemed to catch up. After a moment, he recovered his wits and jabbed an accusing finger at Fran. " _You_ were the one who said he was like a beautiful if oversized pixie!"

Oh, god, she had said that, hadn't she? "Well ... well ..."

As Fran ransacked her mind for anything that might resemble words, Manny finally managed to get a word in edgeways. "You didn't enjoy it then?" he said, looking as crestfallen as a young boy whose ice cream had just fallen on the pavement. "Because I remember you enjoying it. Particularly when we--"

"Stop talking now!" Bernard shouted. Then more quietly, "We shall never speak of this again."

"But ..." Manny said.

"No! No buts!"

"No buts, or no _butts_?" Manny said.

"No buts, and no homophone jokes, either. Especially not ones that rely on Americanisms. We shall never speak of this again. Now, Manny, without any further speaking-of-this, you go to your room and get dressed, and I will lie here completely enclosed in blankets with my eyes tight shut and my mouth shut even tighter so as not to speak of this again, while Fran goes and picks up her clothes. Then when she's gone home without speaking of this, I'll put on mine and _then_ we will go and open the shop. And then we will never speak of this again! Clear?"

"Clear," Manny said. His resigned tone, the one he always used when he gave up arguing with Bernard because it simply wasn't worth it, nearly broke Fran's heart. He slinked away, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

"Bernard, don't you think ...?"

Bernard was already burrowing into his bed, nesting like a mole or something. "I think we should never speak of this again! I thought I made that very very obvious. Now go and ... go! Please."

"I'm going," Fran said, as she extricated herself from the bed and began picking up clothing from the floor. "You really are pathetic, you know that? You push people away because you're frightened that you're fundamentally unloveable."

"Yes, yes, I don't want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member," Bernard mumbled from within his pile of bedclothes. "I'm just like Karl Marx. Whatever. This still feels like speaking-of-this to me. Stop it!"

"Pathetic," Fran said again, and walked out.

* * *

Fran spent the first half of the walk home kicking at random things on the street while entertaining the enjoyable fantasy that they were Bernard's head, and the second half grabbing her foot in pain with every third step, after stubbing her toe on a lamp post in the process.

When she finally got back, she showered for a very long time. And then took a bath for good measure. Then she put on a completely fresh set of clothes, and felt much better.

As the day wore on, and she listlessly did odd jobs around the flat, she thought increasingly of what it must be like over at the shop. Bernard and Manny would be awkwardly avoiding each other, which would make things even worse for the customers than usual, and Bernard would be being particularly mean to Manny to prove to himself that none of it really meant anything ...

... and those thoughts somehow twisted themselves round to how much she _had_ enjoyed the whole thing, now that she was remembering more and more of it. And that the parts where Manny and Bernard had been doing things to each other ranked quite high among her favourites.

After she'd got dressed for the third time that day, she wandered nonchalantly back to the shop through the twilight, stopping quickly at the off licence to buy a bottle of wine.

When she arrived, the shop appeared to be empty. But the tinkling of the bell on the door as she came in quickly brought forth Manny and Bernard from the kitchen area at the back. Bernard looked excessively shifty, the way he did when he thought he was hiding something well; Manny just looked startled. They were both carrying half-empty wine glasses.

"I brought wine," Fran said, trying not to make it sound like anything unusual. Which it wasn't, to be fair.

Bernard snatched the bottle off her. "Ah yes," he said, tilting his head to one side to inspect the label, "a cheeky young wine but not without an amusing pretension." He tilted his head to one side. "And good and cheap, as well. As you can see, we've already opened a couple of bottles from our well-stocked cellar."

"I bet you have," Fran said, suppressing a smile.

"But it's always better to mix things up," Manny said. Fran smiled at him then, properly.

Bernard clapped his hands imperiously, while somehow managing to hold onto Fran's bottle all the while. "Quickly, Manny," he said, "the corkscrew!"

 


End file.
